Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron has a .947 winning percentage, fourth all-time among FBS quarterbacks from AQ conferences who have at least 30 wins. / John David Mercer, USA TODAY Sports

by Rachel Axon, USA TODAY Sports

by Rachel Axon, USA TODAY Sports

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Even before he was winning national championships at Alabama, AJ McCarron lacked patience for teammates who didn't take the game seriously. While the rest of the offense goofed off, the quarterback would take a ball, walk down the sidelines and watch the defense in solitude. He wanted others to play with intensity, to value a game the same way he did.

He was 4 years old.

McCarron would also grow frustrated with teammates in T-ball picking flowers or playing in the dirt. As a teen, horsing around wasn't allowed in pick-up basketball games he played with his younger brother, Corey.

"He would be like, 'Get out of the game if you're not going to play right,'" says Corey McCarron, 20, a walk-on tight end for Alabama.

"I just always felt like when it's game time, it's all about business and that's the way it should be," AJ McCarron explains.

Of all the tools needed to succeed at Alabama under coach Nick Saban, a perfectionist whose commitment to "The Process" has the Crimson Tide nearing dynasty status, this might have served McCarron the best.

On the eve of an Iron Bowl for the ages and the verge of a potential third consecutive national championship, McCarron winds down on a career that he hopes is remembered for doing things the right way. If nothing else, it will be remembered for winning. The senior has led the Crimson Tide to consecutive national championships. A victory for top-ranked Alabama (11-0) against Auburn (10-1), which is fourth in the BCS standings and No. 5 in the USA TODAY Coaches' Poll, would put his team in the SEC Championship and keep it on track for another national championship appearance.

All that for a player who is among the winningest college football quarterbacks of all-time while being cast as only a game manager.

'BEAT YOU WITH BORING'

McCarron is walking off the practice field and chatting with a reporter when he tells Alabama sports information director Josh Maxson to make sure the reporter sees the tweet. If McCarron wants to make a point about a label that has been pinned on him since his sophomore season, this will do it.

The tweet is of a screen-grab taken from SportsCenter that shows McCarron's career stats after a three-touchdown victory over LSU on Nov. 9. They're compared to the college stats of three of the NFL's best quarterbacks - Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers, New England's Tom Brady and Denver's Peyton Manning.

McCarron has a higher winning percentage than all of them, higher completion percentage, better touchdown-to-interception ratio and nearly as many wins vs. top-10 teams on his own (seven) as the three have combined (eight).

For anyone wishing to diminish his accomplishments, to say he is only a game manager - a moniker usually stuck to players who have talent around them and take care of the ball - this is what McCarron sees.

"I think if you ask any college coach probably in America, they want their quarterback to be a game manager of some sort. And if their quarterback isn't a game manager, they're probably not a very successful team," McCarron says. "People can label it as a negative, but I look at it as a great thing."

He does not put up gaudy stats, but he doesn't have to, not with Alabama scoring 39.7 points per game, 13th in the nation. The Crimson Tide has passed for only 240 more yards than it has run for this year. Since 2009, Alabama has averaged 11.6 more passing yards than rushing per game over 65 games.

"We beat you down with boring," says Tony McCarron, AJ's father and a lifelong Alabama fan. "No knock on him, but he's boring. He's not flashy.

"Call him boring. Call him a game manager. Call him whatever you want to call him. At the end of the day, he's gonna beat you. You're gonna walk off that field and you're gonna be mad because you just got beat by boring."

Boring can also be efficient. McCarron is second in completion percentage (68.6) in the SEC to Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel and third in pass efficiency with a rating of 165.1. Last season, he led the country with a passing efficiency rating of 175.2 when he had a streak of 291 passes without an interception.

"I think people undervalue his physical ability," says ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit. "I don't take anything away from his game because of the way he engineers that offense. If anything, again, I have the utmost respect for Alabama's offense and the fact that AJ is running it at a level that we haven't seen in a long time.

"He's the closest thing we have in college football to Peyton Manning and Tom Brady as far as all the preparation that you do."

McCarron has not only grown in stature in his time at Alabama but in size - at 6-4, he was around 170 pounds when he first arrived here and is now listed at 214 - and mental acumen. His ability to read defenses, willingness to take the short pass over the home run and to distribute the ball has also earned him the respect of his teammates.

"If the big play is open, he takes it," says receiver Kenny Bell. "If it's not, he takes what the defense gives him."

"There's several routes he can throw," says offensive lineman Anthony Steen, "but I feel like he always chooses the right one."

That's something McCarron learned over time. Former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy, who was the starter during McCarron's first two years there, remembers McCarron had to make the same adjustments as most high school players.

As a redshirt freshman, McCarron picked up on McElroy's film study habits. When given opportunities to spell McElroy, the offense didn't miss a beat because McCarron had studied throughout the week and was in tune with his checks, McElroy says.

"He's able to get the ball in his playmakers' hands and he's able to get it in their hands early and be able to anticipate passes and be able to anticipate defenses," says McElroy. "It's been really special to watch."

McCarron, 23, possesses an athletic intuition that can't be coached, Saban says. McCarron's best attribute is processing information quickly and throwing the ball to the right place with accuracy, Saban says, attributes that should serve him well in the NFL, even if he's projected to be drafted in the later rounds.

"(It's) sort of the ultimate compliment," McCarron says, "that I take care of the ball, I do the right things, I get us in the right plays, we have the best chance to be successful, I make good choices and decisions with it."

HEISMAN CONTENDER

The den of Tony McCarron's home in Mobile, Ala., is a testament to his son's success. Covering the walls are game-worn jerseys, helmets and a dozen magazine covers AJ McCarron has appeared on. On this day, McCarron's rings have been brought out of a safe deposit box.

There are nine of them - a state championship ring from Saint Paul's Episcopal School, two SEC championship rings and six from three national titles. (The BCS gives the winning team rings and Alabama designed one for each year.) McCarron received one for the 2009 championship when he was redshirting. The other two championships came with him as the starter.

In fact, he has as many losses as a starter as he does title game wins. McCarron improved to 36-2 with Alabama's victory over UT-Chattanooga on Saturday, moving him past Jay Barker as the winningest quarterback in Alabama history.

That success and the fact that the Crimson Tide are on track for another title this year has put McCarron near the top of the Heisman Trophy conversation. He has potentially two more chances to sway voters - Saturday in the Iron Bowl, and, should Alabama win, next week in the SEC Championship.

After Manziel, last year's winner, lost last weekend, he is not considered to be a contender. Florida State freshman quarterback Jameis Winston might be a favorite for the award with the Seminoles still unbeaten, but questions remain about an alleged sexual assault a year ago for which he has not been charged.

Archie Manning has watched McCarron develop with the QB attending the Manning Passing Academy the past three years. While it might have been fair to say McCarron managed the offense in his first year, the past two seasons he has developed into a "really good quarterback," Manning says.

"He's had a Heisman career," says Manning. "If I had a vote, I'd vote for him for the Heisman (this season)."

Colorado State coach Jim McElwain, who recruited McCarron to Alabama and was his offensive coordinator for three years, says McCarron is the best player in college football. The Rams played Alabama this year, giving McElwain a chance to see how his quarterback has developed.

"It is hard for me to grasp what this guy has done and proven," McElwain says. "It is unbelievable to me that he hasn't gotten that respect that he should be due."

While the talk has increasingly focused on the Heisman, McCarron has not. He's "still a happy guy," whether he's in the conversation or not, he says.

"I think he would definitely prefer to have that (championship) ring over the Heisman," says Katherine Webb, the former Miss Alabama USA who with McCarron have turned into the state's first couple. "And not saying somewhere deep down it wouldn't be awesome to have the Heisman award to add to his collection â?¦ but (he's) more looking forward to that fourth ring."

McCarron could finish his career as one of the winningest quarterbacks in college football history and the only with three consecutive national championships and not be selected into the College Football Hall of Fame. Selection criteria requires a player to be named a first-team All-American to make the ballot. McCarron has been no better than third team, and with the likes of Manziel and Winston to contend with could not make one of those teams this year.

"That would be tough for me to, as his coach, accept that (he wouldn't be a first-team All-American)," says Saban.

McCarron's winning percentage (.947) ranks fourth all-time among FBS quarterbacks from AQ conferences who have at least 30 wins. He'd tie Southern Cal's Matt Leinart, who has the most career wins of any Heisman-winning QB, with a win this week and would rank second all-time to Oklahoma's Steve Davis (.956) if the Crimson Tide finishes the season unbeaten. He owns Alabama records for passing yards, touchdowns, and is 16 shy of breaking the record for career completions.

Some time after McCarron won his first national championship as a starter, he made his mother agree to a contract of sorts. While the quarterback does, by all accounts, a remarkable job of blocking out criticism, Dee Dee McCarron has a tougher time not sticking up for her son. When Alabama beat LSU for the title in January 2012, she was wearing a T-shirt that listed the names of the analysts and media members who had doubted McCarron.

After that game, he recorded a video of his mother: "I, Dee Dee (McCarron), will not go after people that talk bad about my son," she says she promised in the video.

Barker knows of the pressure. He also grew up in Alabama, where residents might not be able to name the governor but could unquestionably identify the Crimson Tide coach and quarterback.

"There's a level of expectations and pressure that comes with the job," says Barker. "I think when you grow up in the state, you understand it because you've seen it, you've seen it lived out."

That McCarron's parents, who divorced when McCarron was 5, get recognized on a daily basis sums up the pressure under which their son has had such success. Two weeks ago after Alabama beat Mississippi State on the road 20-7, an acquaintance of Tony McCarron's told him there were about three or four times in the game he had no idea what McCarron was doing. It was the closest win Alabama had in two months since beating Texas A&M by a touchdown, and fans were not happy.

"It's funny reading comments from people like on Twitter, they'll just comment, 'You need to do this more. You need to do this more,'" says McCarron. "It's like, 'Man, we've lost two games since I've been here. Let me just play the position.' I love our fans, I really do. But like I said, it is tough playing here."

The only other person in the state who can relate to that is Saban, who has three national titles in six seasons in Tuscaloosa.

Independent of each other, coach and quarterback described their relationship as having a father-son quality. There has been tough love - Saban famously, firmly swatted McCarron on the behind after a mistake during his redshirt freshman season -as well as mutual respect.

"Coming in here, I had no clue and I had no clue what it took to be successful," says McCarron. Now when Saban says, "The freshmen don't even know they don't know when they don't know it," McCarron gets it.

Find him during a practice and McCarron is as likely as Saban to be riding a player, yelling the way he got yelled at. During last year's national championship, McCarron chewed out center Barrett Jones while trying to get the ball snapped as the play clock expired. Jones shoved his quarterback. (They made up on the sideline.) At the time, Alabama had a four-touchdown lead.

"He hates when people don't do things the right way at every position," says Jones.

McCarron jokes that was Saban's favorite part of the game, seeing two players fighting to get the little things right with the game in hand. But that's fairly typical. Corey McCarron says he gets yelled at a lot more by his quarterback brother than he does his position coach or offensive coordinator.

"He's just like coach Saban," says Corey McCarron. "He is a perfectionist. He wants everything to be perfect."

That makes him rare among athletes Saban has coached. Talented players do not always have that drive.

"They have talent, right, but they also have that sort of psychological disposition, drive, whatever you want to call it, that pushes them to the limit, understanding the challenge is never being satisfied," says Saban. "And that is not normal."

As a redshirt freshman, McCarron led the scout team. McElwain and the Crimson Tide receivers remember film sessions with him. Each day, he'd exhort them to run the right routes, to mimic the opposing team as best they could so the defense would have a good look and be prepared.

When McCarron got the chance to play, it was clear he thrived in pressure situations. Jones remembers McCarron's first big road game as a starter, a September matchup at Penn State in his sophomore year. He didn't seem overwhelmed. McElwain credits McCarron's demeanor for that.

"It's a true confidence that enables him to overcome those pressures," he says.

In fact, McCarron's two losses have both come at home, perhaps a good sign for a road win in the Iron Bowl this weekend. If nothing else, Alabama's most recent road win will serve as a good reminder this week.

As McCarron's parents were driving home from Starkville, Miss., after the 13-point victory, he texted them to thank them for coming and to say he loves them. Stressed after a close game in a tough road environment, his mother said she couldn't have handled much more.

"I like games like that," wrote McCarron, "because that makes the team remember we can't take days off."